Men’s fragrance and grooming brand Villain, from BRND.ME, has taken its Gold Revolver Eau de Parfum out of the feed and onto Bengaluru’s streets. The brand ran a two-day auto-hood branding activation, using auto-rickshaws as moving billboards.
The campaign covered high-footfall pockets of the city, including Russell Market in Shivajinagar, Vidhana Soudha and Koramangala. The revolver-shaped fragrance sat front and centre on every branded hood.
To connect with both sides of the city, Villain ran two lines of communication. “Move Aside! Villain is Here!” spoke to English-speaking audiences, while the Kannada version, “Leyy! Villain Bartha Idey!”, brought a local flavour. Instead of treating Bengaluru’s notorious traffic as an obstacle, the brand made it part of the idea. The autos carried the message through everyday commuter routes, so the crawl of traffic became extra visibility.
The activation was conceptualised and executed entirely in-house. It also marks Villain’s first step into out-of-home and experiential marketing, a big shift for a brand whose playbook has so far leaned on D2C, marketplaces, quick commerce and influencer-led campaigns.
A BRND.ME spokesperson said Villain has always focused on distinctive products and a personality that is hard to miss, and that Gold Revolver is a strong expression of that. Bengaluru, the spokesperson added, offered an interesting canvas to take the product beyond the screen and onto the streets.
As the brand scales, Villain plans to explore similar on-ground formats in other Indian cities, using new ways to build relevance and engage consumers across markets.
